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Team:MIT/miRNA
From 2013.igem.org
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<div class="section" id="Overview"> | <div class="section" id="Overview"> | ||
<h1>Overview of miRNA repression</h1> | <h1>Overview of miRNA repression</h1> | ||
| - | + | <p>miRNA are short (22-24 nt) strands of RNA known to regulate gene expression through repression of mRNA. mRNA that contain the complementary sequence to the miRNA are targeted by the RNA-induced silencing complex and are selectively degraded, thus repressing protein production.</p> | |
| + | <p>Our goal is to use miRNA as a signal for cell-cell communication. We believe this can be accomplished by the packaging of miRNA into exosomes, which would then carry the miRNA signal to a receiver cell. Further, certain miRNA seem to be selectively targeted to exosomes, through a mechanism which is poorly understood. It has been shown that in Jurkat T cells, exosomes are naturally enriched in miR-451 and miR-503. For this reason, we chose to use Jurkat cells as our sender cells and to design a receiver circuit which could detect these two miRNA.</p> | ||
</div><!-- end overview --> | </div><!-- end overview --> | ||
Revision as of 13:07, 24 September 2013
Overview of miRNA repression
miRNA are short (22-24 nt) strands of RNA known to regulate gene expression through repression of mRNA. mRNA that contain the complementary sequence to the miRNA are targeted by the RNA-induced silencing complex and are selectively degraded, thus repressing protein production.
Our goal is to use miRNA as a signal for cell-cell communication. We believe this can be accomplished by the packaging of miRNA into exosomes, which would then carry the miRNA signal to a receiver cell. Further, certain miRNA seem to be selectively targeted to exosomes, through a mechanism which is poorly understood. It has been shown that in Jurkat T cells, exosomes are naturally enriched in miR-451 and miR-503. For this reason, we chose to use Jurkat cells as our sender cells and to design a receiver circuit which could detect these two miRNA.
